New York, Sep 25 Nepal has an “excellent” relationship with India, and while there is “ebb and flow” on the political front, Kathmandu is taking a “pragmatic” approach with New Delhi, focusing on opportunities rather than challenges, Foreign Affairs Minister Shisir Khanal said.
“Excellent, I’d say. We have had a few high-level visits and exchanges, and I just met Indian External Affairs Minister (S Jaishankar) here in New York as well,” Khanal said during a conversation at Asia Society Thursday.
He was responding to a question by Asia Society Global President and CEO Kevin Rudd on how Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s relationship is with the new Balen Shah government in Nepal.
Khanal said the relationship between Nepal and India has a “multidimensional nature”, with two-thirds of Kathmandu’s total trade happening with India.
“The cultural and social relationships are very strong between the two countries as well. On the political front, sometimes there often tends to be ebb and flow. But right now, I think we have one of the excellent relationships,” Khanal said.
Jaishankar held discussions with Khanal at the premises of India’s Permanent Mission to the UN on Wednesday and followed up on bilateral developments since their last meeting in Delhi in June this year, including progress in development partnership and energy cooperation.
When asked how Nepal is navigating the geopolitics of Delhi and Beijing, Khanal said that in the past, ideological differences in Nepali politics used to play some role in managing relationships with its neighbours.
“One of the things that we really focused on is instead of being very ideological about our relationship, just focusing on pragmatic areas of collaboration,” he said.
“Obviously with neighbours,” there will be contentious issues like borders, but instead of focusing on where the challenges are, “our approach right now is where are the opportunities, and that is sort of a pragmatic approach we’re trying to take with India as well.
“So we’re seeing really good positive momentum on energy trade because our economy is very import-dependent. We pretty much import everything,” he said.
Earlier, in his opening remarks at Asia Society, Khanal said that placed alongside continental giants like India and China, Nepal naturally appears small.
“Our neighbours’ scale is a fact of geography; it must never become the ceiling of our ambition. Nepal is not small. Nepal is strategically positioned.”
With its southward neighbour India, he said Nepal’s focus is turning “proximity into production.”
Nepal shares an over 1,700-kilometre open border with five Indian states: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim, home to over 400 million people.
Contiguous to this vast market lies Nepal’s fertile Tarai, he said adding that “Guided by our policy of thick connectivity and thin borders, we’re moving towards structured reciprocal interdependence.”
Nepal’s perennial rivers possess 43 gigawatts of economically viable hydropower. By scaling towards 28,000 megawatts by 2035, Nepal can power regional industrial decarbonisation, exporting clean electricity to India and onwards to Bangladesh, he said.
For global and Indian firms seeking resilient supply chains, locating manufacturing in Nepal’s borders, special economic zones provides a structural edge, continuous low-cost green power to decarbonise production networks alongside favourable international market access.
With China, Nepal’s approach is pragmatic, commercially grounded, and focused on long-term resilience. “Our objective is not simply to open roads to the north; it is to transform Nepal from a landlocked economy into land-linked economy.
“We do not see our northern and southern corridors as competing directions. We see Nepal, land-linked to two of the world’s largest markets, home to nearly three billion people. Our ambition is to turn this geography into gateway for commerce and opportunity,” he said.
(PTI News)
